Welcome

All of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking

Welcome to the 2019 Southern California Biomedical Sciences Graduate Student Research Symposium, organized by graduate students for graduate students. With this symposium, we aim to bring together the graduate research community from institutions throughout Southern California and to provide an opportunity to share and celebrate graduate student research.

We invite all who are participating to share their work and submit an abstract of no more than 500 words as part of the registration. This symposium caters towards both basic and translational biomedical research. Participants are encouraged to present a poster of their research and certain abstracts will be chosen for oral presentations. Awards will be given out for best posters and presentations.

This year, we are excited to present our keynote speaker, Dr. Sarkis Mazmanian. Dr. Mazmanian is the Luis & Nelly Soux Professor of Microbiology at the California Institute of Technology. His research focuses on beneficial bacterial molecules from the human gut microbiome as novel therapies for immunologic and neurologic disorders. Dr. Mazmanian was recently named a Heritage Principal Investigator of the Heritage Medical Research Institute and has received many awards including a Searle Scholar, Young Investigator of the Year at Harvard Medical School, Damon Runyon Innovation Award, was named by Discover Magazine as one of the “Best Brains in Science under 40”, “Life Science Superstar” by Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News, and recently received the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” award.

Last year we had participants from all across California as well as out-of state. This is a wonderful opportunity to be able to meet and network with fellow graduate researchers and to take advantage of the rich biomedical research environment of Southern California.

This symposium is hosted and presented by the Graduate Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. We hope to continue to foster inter-institutional relations all across Southern California and beyond through programs such as this.

Again, thank you for your interest and we hope to see you and your research this year.